


home

by reginaswanmills



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginaswanmills/pseuds/reginaswanmills
Summary: emma is glad that she finally has a home — and regina is glad that she can give her one.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	home

**Author's Note:**

> just sq fluff while i procrastinate school work.

Emma smells pumpkin scents upon opening the door to the big house on Mifflin Street, and stepping inside to be enveloped by warmth. It’s combined with the sweet apple cider that she knew her girlfriend would be mixing up, and the sugar cookies that she’d been dreaming of all day. She can’t exactly decipher if it’s an air freshener or several candles lit around the house, or maybe Regina enchanted some kind of spell — though, they’d both been trying not to do that too much. 

Over the past two weeks, she’d gotten to know deeper insight on this autumn-ish side of Regina Mills. It’d hadn’t come as a total surprise the first year of their co-parenting Halloween, when Henry announced that his mother loved the holiday. She was the Evil Queen in another lifetime, so it made sense. However, the second year, Emma learned that Regina was the stereotypical mother that Emma herself had yearned for in her younger years. 

She baked cookies and pies, homemade apple ciders, decorated to the nines, insisted upon the town’s annual pumpkin carving contest, and even sewed Henry’s Star Wars costume by hand. Though, Emma didn’t see her at Granny’s Halloween party either years; but, now, she thinks that may have had something to do with her self-hatred and isolation. 

Since then, Emma has had nearly a year to grow impossibly closer to the woman, and to learn all of the ins and outs that make her Regina. Though, Emma did not know that Regina switched to a fall scented body wash and shampoo starting October first. She did not know that Regina broke out the fuzzy orange blankets, or the long purple hoodie, or the witch-shaped oven mitts either. 

So far, though, Emma had been loving every second of it. Fall and Halloween seemed to make Regina much softer — not that she wasn’t already at her softest around Henry and Emma, because she was; but it was her turn to shine and become immersed in all the things that she loved, and Emma loved watching her be so carefree. 

One familiar instance happened to be her daily ritual of baking some sort of sweets, while bopping along to the Halloween CD that Snow White had gifted to her last year; although she’ll never admit that she kept it or even listened to it. At first, Emma didn’t understand how one could enjoy listening to Halloween songs, as there wasn’t too many selections to fit that category. Though, once she saw heard the opening lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas’ music, she was grooving right along with her. 

Regina always had that cute little upturn of her lips, content to be in her own little world of preparing a meal for her family; until Emma would walk in, returning to the home she’d left this morning, and her smile would brighten even further. 

“Hello, my love. How was your day?” Deep brown eyes regard Emma’s own dark green with care. She wipes her hands on a towel, hangs her apron on the back of the chair, and slides her hands to rest on Emma’s hips. She tilts her chin, presses a gentle ‘welcome home’ kiss to her lips, bumps her nose lightly against Emma’s. 

Emma — who is sweating beneath the layers of clothing that she’d been required to wear with Storybrooke’s ever-changing weather — but she stays in this warm bubble of closeness and love with her partner. She wants to relish in the fact that she has a home to come to after a long day of work. 

“Hm — good.” She steals another kiss, this one longer. She captures the way Regina’s lips feel against her own. The way she’s running one thumb over and across her hip bone, back and forth, up and down, soothing Emma from that stage of being apart for so long. “Missed you.” 

Regina does the upturn of the corners of her mouth again. Her heart flutters. “I’ve missed you, too, my dear.” She doesn’t just say ‘dear’. She adds ‘my’ to it, as a constant reminder that Emma belongs with this family. She always has a home, a family. She never has to be alone again, never has to run again. It helps to ground her — which Regina knows, and that’s one of the reasons Emma loves her. 

She always knows how to soothe Emma’s fears. How to discourage any doubt Emma may have. She knows Emma better than Emma knows herself, and it’s a miracle, or some kind twist of fate, that they’ve found each other. 

She shifts after a minute, making the move to pull her arms out of the light red windbreaker as the top coat, and then the winter green sweatshirt next. Regina helps, discarding it on the nearest chair — leaving the blonde savior in nothing more than jeans and the grey shirt that’d she originally dressed in. 

Moving closer, her head finds purchase on Regina’s shoulder. Soft skin of her forehead pressed right between that small indent and the smooth olive neck. Emma presses her lips to her neck in a quick kiss, before brushing way the side of Regina’s black top, lips finding her collarbone. 

There’s faded scars and constant reminders of what Regina has been through. Some litter her body, painful memories of what torture and abuse Cora forced her to withstand. Others are trapped in her head as forms of nightmares or triggers. But Emma is still her savior. ( Like when someone that Regina isn’t comfortable with enters her personal space, and Emma puts her arm protectively in front of her body. Or when Regina wakes up from a terror world of hurt and pain, and Emma holds her until she falls back to sleep. ) 

In turn, Regina’s arms wrap around Emma’s waist. She holds her closer, tightly, sensing the extra comfort is needed. Sometimes, when Emma’s abandonment issues come up, she’ll seek out that comfort, and Regina is always right there to provide it. Sometimes, the feeling of needing, wanting, craving to be close to Regina just takes over; and Emma finds herself in similar embraces.

They stay like that for several minutes — until Emma presses one final kiss to her collarbone, deciding that she has breathed in enough of Regina’s scent to part with her before she returns again. “Henry?” She asks, but he could only be one of few places. 

“Upstairs,” Regina confirms. Her arms move back, hands find Emma’s cheeks briefly, to deliver a loving kiss to her forehead. “Go change. Dinner will be ready soon.” 

And even though Emma wishes they could stay within each other’s warm arms forever; she gives a grateful smile, and begins her trek to the stairs. 

+

Dinner keeps Emma’s heart glowing and warm. Henry explains the first big English assignment his teacher has assigned. It’s only the second month of school, and they’d been reviewing vocabulary and essay format the past few weeks. But it’s easily his best subject and favorite class, and he’s pretty good at writing for someone his age. Emma knows that she has never been able to write that well. 

Regina announces that she does, in fact, have to work the next three days of the week, and then host a council meeting on Saturday morning. It puts a tiny halt on the plans Snow had discussed about a weekend family brunch, and then apple picking, and pictures; but neither of them doubt that both Regina and Snow will coordinate some sort of schedule that has Emma constantly running around and never getting a break. 

Once dishes are washed and homework is officially completed, they gather in the living room — because it’s darkening outside, and they’ve all got a vase of Tuesday sleepy blues, and Regina is content to hold her family close. Henry sprawls out across the couch with a napkin of the sugar cookies and a styrofoam cup of apple cider, and lays his claim on the remote by choosing another Avengers movie. 

That leaves Emma to abandon her treats on the stand in favor of joining Regina in the very large recliner that they’d found in the house basement when Emma had first moved in. It held the two of them easily, and Regina covers them with a soft brown blanket. 

Where Emma dominates the energy of being this rough and tough Swan back from her first two years in Storybrooke, she now curls up without hesitation in Regina’s arms. Head resting just below her breast, ear pressed against the fabric of her shirt. She hears all the noises of Regina’s calming breaths, of her faint heartbeat. 

One hand lays flat over Regina’s thigh. The other arm extends over her stomach, hand slipping beneath her shirt to trace patterns over the surface skin of her lower back. She doesn’t pay much attention to the film. Mainly closes her eyes and allows Regina to lull her to a peaceful sleep. 

Regina has always been in control and very self-aware. She had tried so hard for so long to not let anyone in. To keep her feelings bottled up. To not let her guard down. But around Emma, around Henry, she doesn’t have to be that cold person anymore. She can hold Emma close, kiss the top of her blonde head, twirl strands of curls around her fingers, rub large soothing circles over her back, run her fingers across her cheekbones, and whisper sweet things that’ll help her to get a bit of rest, while their son watches a movie.

“Close your eyes.” She whispers low enough so that Henry’s movie is not disturbed, but close enough to Emma’s ear that she can focus on her voice, feel the warm breath dragging her eyes closed further, feel the vibrations of her voice. 

“You need to rest, my dear.” She is in absolute love with the way Emma has chosen to lay against her. She knows that once Emma tumbles into a nap, they’ll either be here long enough that Henry can watch another movie, or that she’ll have a hell of a time prompting Emma to awake long enough to move to the bed. Either way, she sees the faint dark circles beneath those green eyes. She observes the way that Emma moved with exhausted limbs, sluggish movements but a smile on her face regardless. She simply enjoys the way Emma feels this close to her. 

Her breathing eventually evens out, a telltale sign that she is entering a deep sleep. Regina feels the muscles relax against her. She moves one hand up to the back of Emma’s neck, gently rubbing out the stressed knots her skin holds. When she hits a particularly rough one, Emma shifts in her sleep, murmurs something against Regina’s body. But she nuzzles her nose into the blanket and settles once Regina shushes her a bit louder than her previous whispering — wanting to be sure Emma heard her reassuring that everything was alright through her dreams, but enough that Henry turns to watch them for a brief moment. 

+

Emma has no recollection of how she’d gotten into bed, when she slowly awakes the next morning. She stretches out and yawns, before glancing to the alarm clock on the nightstand. Their bedroom — not just Regina’s anymore — is mostly dark, but a faint light casts through the shadow curtains. It’s not yellow sunlight, given it’s barely five thirty in the morning. But that alone is enough to tell Emma that’s it’s going to be rainy and cloudy for most of the day. 

She rolls over in the bed to find that Regina is sleeping on her back, hands clutching at the dark comforter on their bed, hair tied up into an uncharacteristic bun that only Emma and Henry ever get to see her in. Her face is turned to the side, a look of rare peace on the woman’s face. 

Usually, Emma is against waking up or even climbing out of bed this early. But, considering it was around seven o’clock in the evening when her grown adult self had fallen asleep with Regina in the big rocking chair; she feels a small spurt of energy that will probably fade out by ten, but she uses it for what she can now. 

She slips out of the covers, recognizes the sweats she’d put on after work, and pads as quietly as possible in her socked feet to get to the bathroom. She makes it a point of trying not to wake either her girlfriend or son up, by closing the bathroom door lightly and closing the lid of the toilet to flush to muffle the sound. It’s far too early for Henry to be awake — because he would see it as a sign to continue working on his school project, and Emma wants to give him a bit more rest. 

Regina would claim that she has too much to do before work, with Emma not back in bed to convince her to try sleeping in. She would dive right in to preparing herself, checking emails, stacking paperwork needed for the office day. 

She brushes her teeth and washes her face, even swishes around the bright green mouthwash hidden under the sink. She ties her hair into a messy bun similar to Regina’s; though it’s messy without purposely trying. 

Her girlfriend slowly blinks the sleep out of her eyes once Emma has returned to bed. She jumps beneath the comforter before Regina can get used to the cold spot she’d previously left behind. Watching as Regina stretches out her tired limbs and adjusts to the lack of light source in her room; Emma can’t help thinking of how young Regina looks. 

“Five thirty,” Regina mumbles, as she presses closer to Emma’s side and closes her eyes again. Emma returns the comfort that this woman had provided for her last night; by pressing a quick kiss to her cheek, and rubbing a hand over her shoulder. She knows how achy Regina’s body can become after a too long or too deep if a sleep. It has a lot to do with the fact that Regina had never really slept good until Emma came along, or really started spending the night, and eventually moved in. 

She’d been constantly afraid back then. Or anxious, afraid of what she’d done; or too haunted by her ghosts and actions that she’d developed insomnia. Henry had never stayed sleeping for more than two hours as an infant. As he grew older, Regina’s worries and fears of him being taken away, of her losing her son, of someone ruining the curse, kept her up most nights. As a result, she threw herself into work. She tried Dr. Hopper’s medication. She allowed Graham to occasionally sleepover, hoping his presence would’ve enough to put her out like a light. But she always awoke a few hours after their strenuous activities, and found it uncomfortably strange to have a man in her bed. 

With Emma, both of their sleep schedules had gotten better. They couldn’t wait to curl up in each other’s arms, letting sleep wash over them. 

“We have to get up,” Regina murmured, leaning into the touch. In a similar, sleepy way that Emma had done yesterday, she buried her nose into the fabric of Emma’s cardigan that she’d pulled on before slipping back into the room. Most times, she was the one coaxing Emma to awake. Though, this morning, she dreaded having to work. The past two days off of mayoral duties had been nice. She’d been able to work from home, typing up reports in the cozy of her home, in a pair of leggings and one of Emma’s hoodies that she’d never allow anyone else to see her wearing. 

She hadn’t had to act so rigid. Hadn’t needed to sit up straight in the leather desk chair, clicking away with her nails, so frustratedly focused that she snapped anytime her secretary barged in. 

“Not yet.” So they stayed there — until six o’clock, until Regina managed to pull herself from bed and warm embraces, and begin the process of getting ready. Showering. Applying beauty products. Helping Emma to curl her hair into the pretty blonde princess waves that she herself had become pretty enchanted to see. Straightening her own hair. Dressing in something entirely formal and not at all comfortable. Starting the coffee machine. Being carefully quiet enough to not wake Henry.

Scolding Emma for cursing when she’d stubbed her toe on the bottom stair. Reminding her to not forget her boots by the door. Packing up her briefcase and laptop. Fiddling with the collar of the red leather jacket, sending her love off to work with a kiss to her lips, chin, and cheek. 

This had become a small part of her morning routine, an even smaller part of her daily routine. 

+


End file.
